


Happy Belated Birthday

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Warlock Dowling's Not Entirely Normal Life [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 01:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20249725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Several weeks after the world didn't end, Crowley wakes up from a nightmare about Warlock.  Meanwhile, Warlock thinks America is stupid.





	Happy Belated Birthday

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [С запоздалым днём рождения (Happy Belated Birthday)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24984235) by [Gewi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gewi/pseuds/Gewi)

“Angel, I need to use your computer.”

Aziraphale put aside his Georgette Heyer novel, which he knew practically by heart but found it pleasant just to feel the pages in his hands. It was three a.m. and there was a thunderstorm outside, meaning that Crowley had just burst inside with a gust of rain and wind. Most of the rain seemed to be on him. “Crowley, you’re  _ dripping,” _ he objected.

Crowley made a sharp upward motion and all the water turned to steam, giving him a small cloud to undulate out of. “I  _ need _ to use your computer.”

“All right, but what in the world do you need it for at this time of night?”

Crowley was silent for a moment. “Had a bad dream,” he said finally, looking away from Aziraphale.

“A bad dream?”

“I dreamed about Warlock. Meeting Hastur on the plains of Megiddo. Warlock said that he smelled like poo—that bit isn’t just a dream, Hastur told me that actually happened.”

“Well, he—is anyone listening?”

Crowley did whatever he did to sniff out supernatural influences. Aziraphale wasn’t sure how he could be so accurate— _ Aziraphale’s _ senses certainly weren’t that sharp—and he wasn’t sure why, with all the other modes available to him, Crowley firmly perceived it through his sense of smell. It might have been a bit of serpent-ness coming through. “No,” Crowley said after a moment.

“Well, Hastur did seem to have a certain—aroma about him. When I met him in Hell.”

“He reeks like an open sewer, that’s not the point. The point is, I dreamed that after Warlock did that, Hastur killed him.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said quietly.

“It was one of Hastur’s favorite kills, too. Flesh-eating bugs. They go in through the eyes, it’s nasty.”

“It was just a dream,” Aziraphale said. This was probably the point where a human would embrace someone, wasn’t it? Tactile comfort and all that. Only Crowley was already prowling towards the back of the shop, and he might be prickly about tactile comfort, and Aziraphale was somewhat awkward with it as well. He had to find a new equilibrium, somewhere between showing affection and giving Crowley his space, and it wasn’t coming easily to him. “And even if it wasn’t a dream, Adam restored everyone who died in the Apocalypse, so Warlock will be perfectly all right! There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine.”

_ “We think _ Adam restored everyone,” Crowley retorted over his shoulder. “We didn’t exactly go down the list and check.”

“There wasn’t a list. How would we check it?”

“Exactly. Which means we can’t be sure—angel, what the  _ heaven _ is that?”

“My computer,” Aziraphale said.

“I can’t search the web on that! It still takes floppy disks!”

“Of course you can,” Aziraphale told him. “I don’t use it much, but I do look up the google now and again to find the odd book. Here.” He switched the computer on.[1 ]

_ “Look up the google,”  _ Crowley muttered. “Do you even have a modem?”

“What’s a modem?” He thought of something else. “Crowley, why didn’t you use your own computer? I know you have one. It’s all black.” Like many of the things Crowley owned. “Ever so big across.”

“That’s the  _ monitor, _ angel, not the—argh. Yes, I tried my computer. No, it didn’t work. I binned it.”

“You binned your brand new . . .”

““I didn’t recognize  _ any _ of the error messages it was giving me. One of them said it was out of cheese! What does a computer want with cheese?”[2 ]

“Well, mine doesn’t want any,” Aziraphale said. “Here. Use this.” He pushed in a floppy disk labeled  _ The Internet. _

Aziraphale wasn’t sure how to interpret the look Crowley was giving him, or the look he gave the computer when the google predictably came up on the screen.[3 ] But he typed  _ Warlock Dowling _ into the search bar.

“There, you see,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “It says Thaddeus Dowling and family are moving back to America. It would say if something awful had happened to the  _ and family _ part.”

“I suppose.” Crowley clicked on another link. The article contained roughly the same news.

“They’re safe. You don’t have to worry.”

“I don’t care about  _ them,” _ Crowley said. “Thaddeus Dowling is a git. I care about  _ Warlock.” _ He pushed the chair away from the computer. “Should check up on him more often. We  _ were _ more or less his godparents.”

“By accident,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“But we were  _ there.” _

Aziraphale thought about it.

Warlock was—well, Warlock was going through a phase where he thought everything was stupid or lame, and Aziraphale had found that exceedingly trying, but he did have affection for the child. Crowley wouldn’t  _ admit _ to affection, but if he woke up in the middle of the night panicking about Warlock’s safety, the affection was probably there nonetheless.

“We could send him birthday presents, if you want,” Aziraphale ventured. “We’re a little bit late, but a present is a present. He wouldn’t mind. And we could—we could make sure he isn’t getting bullied in the American schools, things like that.”

“Yeah.” Crowley seemed to be coming un-tense, slowly. “Could work.”

§ 

Warlock was not enjoying America.

It wasn’t anything in particular about America, just that it wasn’t England and it wasn’t where his friends were and he missed people. He stomped up the stairs, fresh from another row with his mother, and flung himself into his room, and stopped.

There was a plant on the table. And a stack of books.

He edged forward. The maids cleaned his room, of course, but they always put things back where they were supposed to be. They didn’t add anything. Who would put some stupid  _ plant _ in his room? Why would the plant have an envelope underneath it?

He opened the envelope.

It had a birthday card, with the word  _ belated _ inserted in neat handwriting between  _ Happy _ and  _ Birthday. _ It wasn’t signed.

The paper underneath it seemed to be instructions for caring for the plant, which were more involved than Warlock had expected. A plant. You put water on it, and it grew. What did nitrogen have to do with anything, anyway?

And what did the bit at the bottom mean?  _ This is a snake plant. It’s easy for beginners, so don’t put up with any nonsense from it. It will grow better if you terrorize it. _

The books were some sort of adventure series, and provided just as few clues to their origin.

Warlock thought about this for a moment. It was intriguing, really. He was almost certain these presents hadn’t come from his parents, and they definitely hadn’t come from his friends. There was evidently someone out there who cared for him (in a weird, plant-terrorizing sort of way) and he didn’t know who.

That was . . . sort of neat.

“All right, you,” he said to the plant. “You’re a snake plant, right? Your name is Mister Hisster. Let’s find you a spot.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1The computer in question was an Amstrad PCW, which boasted a monochrome monitor and two floppy disk drives. Aziraphale’s could display photorealistic color when it wanted to. It could also answer simple questions so long as they were typed in with correct spelling and punctuation (Oxford commas absolutely required). Aziraphale was blissfully ignorant of what a computer actually _was_, and his machine reflected that.[ return to text]
> 
> 2There was absolutely nothing wrong with the unfortunate computer, which was a lovely machine with enough RAM to make a hardcore gamer drool. However, if you take a demon who expects computers to be difficult, give him a panic attack, and then induce him to use the computer during the panic attack, you get errors worthy of a Pulsifer.[ return to text]
> 
> 3 There are, in fact, no words in English for the frustration of someone who fancies themself a power user finding out that their significant other thinks the internet comes on a three and a half inch floppy. There are no words in any Earthly tongue for the frustration of that same supposed power user when it works.[ return to text]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Happy Belated Birthday](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23612311) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)


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